Crashing Down
by AnbarElectrum
Summary: Oscar thought nothing could disrupt his life as utterly as inheriting Ozpin's soul, and he was right. But Ozpin's problems are Oscar's now, and Jinn's storytime has thrown the boy and his companions into disarray and doubt. Thematically-connected ficlets set during episodes of Vol. 6, in which Oscar grows, and thinks, and learns when not to think. Spoilers for V6&V7 (last chapter)
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N: Did someone order an overthought present-tense angst piece centred around Uncovered? No? Too bad, you're getting one anyway. _ **First**_**_ ** **RWBY**** _ ** _ **fic, by the way. Boy did I jump in feet-first.**_**_ _ ** _ ** _ **And, um...**_**_**_

 _ ** _ ** _ **...Look, I'm not picking sides here. This fic is neither bashing nor apologist in tone, at least not intentionally. This is my humble offering of an interpretation of Oscar's POV on the big blowout fight.  
**_**_**_

 _ **Fic name is a song title, and while this isn't actually a song fic I would highly recommend listening to**_ **Crashing Down** _ **by Heather Dale while in a**_ **RWBY** _ **headspace, especially vis-à-vis this episode and this story. It fits scarily well.  
**_

* * *

 **But I say why believe in place of proof**

Oscar can't pinpoint why, exactly, but the moment the conversation turns to Professor Lionheart he begins to feel uneasy. Ozpin doesn't break stride, but Oscar can feel his shoulder muscles tensing, his fingers curling tight. The answer unfurls itself gradually, though for once Ozpin spells out most of it aloud. As usual, though, the most important piece of the puzzle goes unspoken.

Leonardo Lionheart, Ozpin argues, was a good man who made mistakes. Mistakes that amounted to terrible, truly reprehensible actions. Unpardonable sins. But surely a handful of sins, however severe, shouldn't utterly eclipse the good deeds which came before? Surely a man should not be judged by his errors alone, but also on his merits?

(It is at this point Oscar begins to wonder if it's still the late Headmaster of Haven they're talking about. The equally-late Headmaster of Beacon seems to be taking his old students' condemnations awfully personally.)

Then Ozpin finally snaps, shouts, and that final, most important piece falls into place. Of course Lionheart was not the first to betray Ozpin's trust, to err and to sin when better was required of him.

That honour belongs to Ozpin himself.

Oscar catches a glimpse of it for a moment, Ozpin's very own original sin, while the old wizard is distracted by splitting hairs on the subject of trust. There's a stale weariness to this dredged-up memory, a sadness and strangeness and an age that suggests an old chest pulled out of the attic for the first time in years. He is only half-listening as Ozpin weighs hope against paranoia, tries justifying faith in humanity as a whole alongside difficulty trusting people as individuals. Instead, he skims the surface of the memory, knowing he will someday remember it as though he'd lived it but curious despite himself. Not invested enough to dig deeper, though.

Not until he sees a woman with flushed, living flesh where bone-white skin should be, staring at him with guileless blue eyes that should be hateful and red as raw Burn Dust. Not until Ozpin slams the mental door on him, tenses even more and steps forward, holds his hand out for the Relic— _for the lamp, he called it a lamp, and inside it—_

Jinn. Jinn has knowledge—Jinn _is_ knowledge. She was made for questions; she will have answers.

 _ **Oscar—Oscar, don't do this.**_

 _If you won't trust me, I'll get the answers another way._

 _ **I**_ **do** _ **trust you. How could I not? But some things are private.**_

 _Funny how that only seems to go one way._

 _ **You can't handle thousands of years' worth of memories yet! I'll answer any question you ask, Oscar but…not this one. Not yet.**_ **Please.**

Oscar brushes aside his warnings, but hesitates for a moment over the uncharacteristic plea. In the end, though, he's still determined, reaching for control of his body. He feels a flicker of fear from the old man, a sudden impulse to flee and to hide that does not belong to him.

 _ **Oscar—**_

Control doesn't come. It's as though he's pulling his way along a delicate thread, trying to follow it back to where it goes, back to where he belongs. But Ozpin has the other end held fast, and each time Oscar thinks he nearly has it, the wizard snatches it back.

Oscar's had nightmares about this.

(So has Ozpin.)

 _Let go._

 _ **Be reasonable.**_

 _Asking for my own body back seems pretty damn reasonable to me! Let go!_

Ozpin's grip tightens.

 _ **Oscar. Do not do this.**_

 _You_ promised, _Ozpin! Never again! You promised!_

Distress, at that, and more than Oscar had been expecting. But not enough for Ozpin to convince himself to let go. Perhaps a second or two has passed in the outside world; Oscar can still see his hand reaching out towards Ruby, but it's shaking now. His feet are rooted in place, and Ozpin's borrowed voice has fallen silent.

 _There._ He lunges, and this time, he wins. It isn't much, but he has his voice back, and bless them, they all immediately realise it's _him_ speaking, not Ozpin, because every word is a strain and he doubts he has time to explain.

"He's trying to stop you!"

Jinn's name is the last thing Oscar fully remembers saying. He thinks he must have managed to blurt out the summoning instructions, too, because a wave of **horror-despair-rage** slams through him as Ozpin abandons their mental tug-of-war in favour of overwhelming force, seizing control back from him with a brutality that physically knocks them down. But he is limited, always limited, in how much control he can _take._ This is still Oscar's body, after all. For now, at least. Oscar can hold him here, if nothing else, though he wonders how much of that is due to the strength of his will and how much is the natural paralysis of Ozpin's panic.

Day by day, Oscar's emotions and thoughts become harder to sort out from Ozpin's—in theory, at least. Day by day, the attempt to sort them anyway becomes second nature, and that's a far gentler learning curve than the slow, almost imperceptible integration process. It is nearly impossible to think through the storm of _**gods no, please no,**_ **don't** and _stop, let me go, let me out,_ but feeling…

Oh, _feeling_ is far too easy, and in the deepest, most detached place in the numbed recesses of Oscar's mind, the sorting begins.

The confusion is his, it has to be; Ozpin is, after all, the one with all the answers. And just as it only makes sense for Oscar to be confused, the other prominent emotions in this mad slew—the dread, the grief, the _shame—_ must belong to Ozpin. But over it all fury and terror claw at each other in pure desperation, and Oscar is not sure where his end and Ozpin's begin, especially not with the hot pulse of _betrayal_ pounding through both of them.

Ironic that it is now, on their knees in the snow with their head threatening to split in two, that they are as close to being one as they have ever been.

 _ **Damn you—**_ **damn** _ **you—!**_

Ozpin's 'voice' is laced with venom Oscar has never heard from him before, and it is _frantic,_ incoherent; Oscar is not sure he meant to 'speak' at all.

 _Why couldn't you just tell us—?_

 _ **WHY COULDN'T YOU LEAVE IT ALONE!?**_

The outside world only exists in flashes. Nothing, and then Jinn is there, languid and otherworldly. Nothing, and then Ozpin speaks, his inner hysteria bleeding out into reality. Nothing, and then RWBY is _pointing their weapons at Qrow_ _ **will help, he has to, he always helps**_ but he doesn't. He stands by their side, _on_ their side of the invisible line between the three of them and RWBY— _the two of you,_ because Oscar would be on the other side if he had any choice, if he'd _ever_ had a choice. But Qrow's faith, his _unshakeable_ faith that Ozpin has depended upon for _decades_ , is placed instead in Ruby's hands. Oscar's heart is beating in Ozpin's tempo, and for a sickening moment, it falters.

 _ **Qrow…?**_

So much mistrust. So much anger. Already the cracks are widening into an irreparable divide. How pleased _she_ would be if she could see them all now.

The last nail in the coffin is when Qrow's red eyes drift away from Jinn's glowing form to settle on Oscar. On Ozpin. They are wide, almost fearful, his mouth slightly agape. Oscar has never seen him so vulnerable—Ozpin has not seen it since Qrow's school years, had himself aided in its disappearance—and there is no telling whose fault it is when the heart in their chest clenches, a frigid hand of hurt and loss squeezing as though to turn the precious organ into dust.

Their fear and their anger can no longer be separated; they twine around each other, feeding into the maelstrom that threatens to consume them.

 _ **They will know. They will know and they will turn, and they**_ _hate you now, and I'll be you and something will have to give. What if they can't forgive you when you're me? What if they hate me when I'm you_ _ **should have thought of that, should have asked, should have**_ _talked when there was still time, told the truth on our terms_ _ **of surrender are all they will want now, if they even wait to hear my side of this**_ _story can't end well, what did you do, what did_ _ **you expect would happen when you gave our secrets away to four idealistic teenagers and a stranger**_ _who they already trust more than_ you, _'Professor'—_

"What is Ozpin hiding from us?"

Ruby's voice, followed by a surge of power more ancient than even the old wizard bound to Oscar's soul.

Ozpin cries out, anguished, half-mad, and he rips free from Oscar's hold and his own terrible uncertainty to charge the silver-eyed girl. He does so unarmed, his Aura inactive. It is not an attack. It is a drowning man clawing for the water's surface, a cornered Huntsman flinging himself away from a lethal blow. It is inevitability, and a last, desperate attempt to thwart it.

All at once, Oscar's anger dies. In its wake is pity. _It's done_ , Oscar whispers, steeling himself. Resigning himself. Whatever will become of Ozpin after this is his fate, too, and there will be no escape from it.

"Once upon a time," Jinn begins, but he can barely hear her over the last, horrible scream that tears through his mind, bitter with frustration and helplessness and the anticipation of loss.

Oscar knows this story, _The Girl in the Tower._ Ozpin knows a very different version of it. The boy with two souls can only pray that Jinn's telling of it will not be the breaking of them both.


	2. Chapter 2

_**A/N: Aw, thanks for all the lovely reviews, guys! To my surprise some of those reviews have included expressions of interest in seeing me write a bit more in this vein—'sup, Ardoa88, Lord Darth Yoda—and while this may or may not be quite what people were looking for, it's what came to mind. Anyone hoping to see this pick up immediately after Jinn's story will likely be disappointed at first, but I already wrote a Qrow-centric one-shot built around the opening of V6C4 (it's called**_ **And For What?** _ **if you're inclined to go looking) and I'm not sure I could get anything more than a short drabble out of Ozpin and Oscar's immediate reactions without heavily retreading territory that I or the show itself has already covered.  
**_

 _ **Also, now that we have chapters, we have chapter titles because I'm a sucker for naming things. The chapter names are excerpts from the lyrics of the eponymous song, because I'm also a sucker for a good thematic concept. Also also, if you're returning to this story, you're not crazy: the first chapter's author's note has been pared down now that everything about The Lost Fable and the episodes bracketing it is somewhat less of a hot-button issue. Lastly, I tried but failed to change the character tags to mention Maria, because she stubbornly refused to remain as basically-furniture and instead is just as central to this chapter as Ozpin was to the last one? Alas, the site could not oblige me, as there is not yet a category for her. Hope I did justice to our crazy scythe-swinging Abuelita Queen, she's quickly become a favourite of mine tbh**_

 _ **Without further ado…**_

* * *

 **Was this your boyhood vision (to endure the world's derision)**

It's silent. To Oscar's surprise, it's not a welcome change.

Sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace in the old Brunswick ranch house with a loud clamour of echoing nothing inside his skull, he feels as if he is going mad, his thoughts and emotions bouncing around aimlessly inside a mind that feels too big for one. He wonders if that's just because he'd started acclimating to Ozpin's presence, or if having the old wizard sharing space with him has actually changed him somehow, inside. Is he now just…wired differently? Altered at some basic level to support two minds, two souls, even if only for a little while before…

He sighs heavily, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Maria glance at him over top of the volume in her hands. He doesn't look up at her, but his own hands tighten defensively around the cane laid across his lap, just waiting for her to say something.

Instead, the curious old woman hums in a timbre Oscar can't decipher and bows her head over the pages again, her mechanical eyes seeming to stare blankly down.

He forces himself to relax, deliberately loosening his grip. He needs to stop assuming everyone who so much as looks at him is judging him and poised to say as much. The trouble is, he knows that for once, he's not just being anxious and overreacting. He has every reason to believe his newfound allies could just as swiftly turn to foes, or more likely just straight-up _leave_ once they get back to civilisation _,_ and the worst part is, he's not sure he'd blame them for either move.

 _("Do you really think he was the first!?")_

…He's thinking like Ozpin, and he hates it, for so many reasons. Maybe it was a side effect of being, what had Ozpin called him—a like-minded soul? Or maybe the merge (or takeover) had already begun in earnest. Or maybe he was just turning into a cynical paranoiac on his own merits. Or maybe—

"You're breathing like a bellows, son. Little young for heart trouble, aren't you?"

His head whips around, and he stares at Maria with wide eyes.

(His right hand has already flown to the cane's hilt in a seamless, darting motion, fingers slipping neatly under the knuckle-guard. It's unclear which set of instincts sent it there.)

The old woman closes the book and sets it in her lap, resting a hand atop its cover. "Of course, there's more than one kind of heart trouble, now isn't there?"

Oscar doesn't know what to say. Fortunately, Maria does.

"For example, there's the kind young Ruby's having, watching everyone around her break down or tune out while she tries to hold it all together. Then there's whatever's eating ol' Branwen out there bad enough to make him kick a man while he's down and never mind the boy who takes the bruise. And here we have you, young man. It's Oscar, right? 'Fraid I missed that part of the introductions; everyone was too preoccupied with the other fella walking around in your skin."

"Y-yeah. Oscar Pine," he replies, trying not to dwell overlong on the mental image her last words have conjured. "I-it's nice to meet you, Ms. Calavera," he adds hastily, because she's right; they really haven't been introduced, and Auntie would be appalled at his lack of manners.

(She wouldn't, really, not with so much _else_ to be appalled at, but it's a comforting thought to hold onto.)

Maria snorts, laughs, hand slapping down on the hardbound book with a sharp _thwap_. "Ha! 'Ms. Calavera'. My name's Maria, lad, always has been. Getting old didn't change that!"

"Right," Oscar replies lamely, once again having to stamp down his own thoughts: getting old would change _his_ name, even if Ozpin kept his legal moniker.

Assuming, of course, that Ozpin ever came back from where he's locked himself away, which seems less and less likely as time goes on without the faintest flicker of his presence. Honestly, the sense of Ozpin had been stronger during the months before he'd introduced himself than it was right now. Still, there's no way an enchantment crafted by the God of Light Himself will give up so easily. Maybe now Oscar will wake up one day and just _be Ozpin,_ completely out of the blue, and neither of them will be happy about it. If that's his only alternative, he reflects mournfully, he'd frankly preferred the original version of this whole reincarnation thing, where he could keep tabs on his once-and-future-self and track the progress of their integration. At least when he had Ozpin to talk everything out with, he had some chance of making peace with his fate as his predecessors presumably had.

"That said," Maria says loudly, "while I'm no stickler for formalities, I do like it when people pay attention to me when I'm speaking to them."

Oscar startles—and, _oh,_ he realises belatedly, he _had_ heard Maria's voice dimly in the background for a bit there. "I'm sorry, I was just thinking. I shouldn't have let myself get so distracted."

"Hm." The shutters on Maria's goggles—eyes, she had been very insistent on calling them that—have closed so that only a tiny slit of blue light shows on either side.

…Oh gods, she's _squinting_ at him, just like Auntie does.

"Y'know, I think that's your problem," she says. "Now, I've only known you for what, a day? And it's fair to say that none of us are in any position to put our best foot forward here. But if I had to take what I know about you and guess, I'd say you think too much."

"Think…too much?" Ozpin had always encouraged him to think _more,_ to examine every situation from every possible angle. They'd spent a decent chunk of their bedridden days after Haven running thought exercises, Ozpin tossing him hypotheticals and Oscar breaking them down as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Oscar hadn't even needed much convincing; they'd both been bored out of their minds, and he'd always enjoyed puzzles. For her part, his aunt had been supportive of his bookworm tendencies even though she'd relied on his help around the farm. Said she was pleased he was taking an interest in his own education. To be told that he thought too much was literally unprecedented.

"Oh, yes. See, the trouble with thinking is that it's just like everything else you do: eventually you do so much of it for so long that you just burn out. You're turning circles in your head right now, and for what? Is thinking going to get you out of this situation—this _specific_ situation that's weighing on you right this moment, worrying about how long you'll be, well, you?"

"I…" Oscar turns his gaze to the floor. "I don't know. Maybe? It can't hurt to try."

"Sure it can," Maria says flatly. "You've been trying for hours and you look plenty hurt to me. Take it from someone who knows from experience, Oscar." She taps the outer frame of her mechanical eyes. "Don't break yourself fretting over what you can't change. Adapt and push on."

"Having an extra soul isn't the same as lacking a pair of eyes," Oscar replies. The words could have easily been biting, but instead they just sound tired. "There's no such thing as a prosthetic personality, either."

"Give those mad scientists up in Atlas time," Maria says in a wry tone that leaves Oscar unsure of how much she's joking. "Gods know there's more than a few Atlesians who could do with a personality transplant; one in particular comes to mind…" Her eyes have dimmed into slits again, and she's almost growling her last words. Then she shakes herself, her tone lightening as she goes on.

"But seriously now, time is exactly what it takes. These old things didn't exist when I lost my original eyes, y'know. I made do with sunglasses and a white-tipped cane, same as any civilian on a budget. I had to wait for a better solution to come along, and it did. It's not what I really wanted—my old eyes back—but I had to accept that was never going to happen. Accepting your new normal isn't giving up, Oscar, even if it feels that way to you now. It's the strongest thing you can possibly do."

Her blank stare turns slightly towards the door. "Hmph. If only that girl with the fisticuffs would tamp down her temper, I think she'd be able to give you this talk just the same."

"That's my fault, though," Oscar says quietly, tucking his chin against his chest. "It's me she's angry with."

"No, it's the old man inside your head she's angry with, and if she's any true friend of yours she'll remember that once she cools off." Maria pauses. "I can't believe I'm actually having this conversation. There's an ancient wizard-king living inside your head! And I thought I'd seen everything. So to speak."

Except Ozpin is so much more than out-of-place thoughts in his head and phantom muscle memory in his limbs. Oscar wants to object because Maria doesn't quite get it, but he doesn't know how to explain. To say that yes, he's worried about himself, about what's going to happen to him and what's happened to him already, but also that—that—

"I just watched my children die," he blurts out, so abruptly that the horrifying words sound eerily casual. Conversational. "Up to then, I was watching Ozma's life. Salem's life, after he was gone. I felt—I saw Ozma's second life and it just hit me like a like a ton of bricks, how confused he looked, how scared. Neither of them knew it was coming. It was still a—a _them_ problem, even though it felt like seeing the first time I heard Ozpin from the outside. But the children—their children— _my children,_ Maria, _we killed our little girls—!"_

Maria moves faster than a woman her age should be able to, kneeling down next to him and resting a wrinkled hand on his back as he sobs.

"More than one kind of heart trouble," she repeats softly, "and here's you with more than one heart to be getting on with. Just you cry now, son. It's your right."

Oscar isn't sure how long he spends weeping another man's tears while a stranger's touch anchors him, but there's still light outside when he finally takes a series of deep, shuddering breaths and manages not to fall right back into the cycle. He feels like he's been hollowed out, exhausted and numb, unable to really appreciate how the knot in his chest has loosened some from the release.

"I never wanted this," he says hoarsely.

"Tough," Maria replies, matter-of-fact.

Strangely, that makes Oscar laugh—a little hysterically, and without much mirth, but it beats the tears. "It really is, isn't it?"

Maria's hand works its way around to his far shoulder, and she squeezes him gently. "Now you're getting it."

She lets him go and eases herself backwards with a groan, so that she's sitting rather than kneeling, both feet planted firmly against the floor.

"Here," Oscar says, scrambling to his feet once he realises what she's trying to do. He hands her his cane, then holds out his hand. Maria takes it in one of her own, using the cane to brace her weight against as Oscar helps pull her upright.

"Thank you kindly," she says once she's gotten her feet back under her. She raises his cane a little and inspects it closely. "This is good craftsmanship. Looks solid. It doesn't transform?"

"Not that I know of."

"Huh. Well, guess it does predate the modern Huntsman. Stands to reason, even if it is a bit of a shame." She hands it back to him, nodding. "Something to be said for a good, stout stick though. Especially when you can use magic, I suppose!"

"Well, _I_ can't—" Oscar cuts himself off, eyes wide.

Maria scoffs, throwing up her hands in disgust as she stumps back to the couch, her gait hitching a little without her own cane to support her. "You dwell on the existential crisis and the inherited nightmare material but completely forget you're a wizard now! See what I mean about thinking too much?"

Oscar stares down at his open palm, his other hand wrapped loosely around his cane. Of course. He knows, somehow, that Ozma's magic was bound to his Aura—which is one with Oscar's Aura, now. Ozpin has all the expertise, but that power is part of _him._

"I feel like this could be really dangerous to mess with," he says cautiously, as much to himself as to Maria. "And…Ozpin said something about his magic being finite. 'Dwindling', actually."

"Well, something to save for a rainy day, then."

He nods slowly.

After a moment, Maria speaks again. She sounds quite serious now. "You know, I'd mention it to the others, but they're still pretty raw, so I guess you'll have to be the first one to hear this."

He looks up to see her seated on the couch again, patting the ornate skull figurine atop her cane. "Every Huntsman and Huntress signs up to fight a losing battle, to be foot soldiers in a war that can't ever be won, and every last one knows it from the start, or else they're delusional. That's just how it is, and it's how it's always been. So this Salem woman can't be killed? There's no neat and tidy bow to tie on the whole Grimm problem? Ha! Why're we all acting like this is news? Honestly."

She shakes her head and picks up the journal again, cracking it open and flipping swiftly through the pages, looking for her place. "But people need time to grieve for their hopes same as for their loved ones. They'll come around in time. Meanwhile, we'll all just have to muddle through trying our best. That's all anyone has any right to ask."

Oscar's brow furrows as he processes that, letting Maria's words click into place. "Thanks," he says at last.

Maria gives him a _look._ "For what, dear?"

"Being the voice of common sense," Oscar replies, smiling rather sheepishly and rubbing at the back of his neck. "And, y'know. Talking to me. At all."

"Well, from what I hear, you and I both got dropped into the deep end with this whole ancient conspiracy nonsense, so I'll tell you what. You fill me in on some of the details I missed out on, and we'll call it even."

"Deal," Oscar says, feeling calmer than he has in…hours.

Gods, it really _has_ been less than a day since Jinn knocked their world off its axis. It feels like an eternity. …No, that's not true. He'd felt an echo of the span of Ozpin's unnatural life earlier, the haunting loneliness of it. _That_ is what eternity feels like.

Even now, he expects Ozpin's mind to brush against his, acting like a buffer against the overwhelming dread that rises every time he lets himself contemplate just how long the rest of his life threatens to be. When had he become used to things like that? When had he come to depend on them?

Oscar settles himself back down in front of the fire, idly calling forth just a little of his bottle-green Aura. It spiderwebs over his skin like static electricity, and when he lifts a hand, he sees a fine tracery of golden magic caught in the field of energy, shimmering like filigree against the fabric of his glove.

Everyone else is just so _angry_ at Ozpin, and Oscar gets it; hell, he's got as much right to be furious as any of them and he _wants_ to be. But even without taking into account the creeping numbness of sheer emotional exhaustion, he can't be. He can't be, because even though Ozpin is gone for now his guilt and shame are a weight in Oscar's chest, threatening to blot out the lightness of Maria's brusque kindness. He can't be, because even as much as Oscar's been through and as much as he hates the situation, he's not far gone enough to hate himself.

He sits there in silence and lets the apathy roll over him like the snowy fog outside.


	3. Chapter 3

_**A/N:**_ _ ** _ **Oh my God I actually did it.**_**_

 _ **I mean, uh LOOK Maria's in the character tags now woooOOOO**_

 _ **Ahem. As anyone who remembers this former two-shot knows, I once mentioned an idea for a third part set during Dead End (V6C8) that would flash back to the opening of So That's How It Is (V6C4). And that's**_ **exactly** _ **what this is, though I also wound up writing Yet Another Episode-Nine-from-Oscar's-POV section, because somewhere along the line this fic went from "Oscar and Ozpin telepathically shouting at each other and having FEELINGS while literally just the entire rest of Uncovered happens in the background" to "character development hit Oscar like a very rude truck this season and boy do I like to pretend I know what's going on inside his head". On which note, since His Nibs actually deigned to drop us a line for the finale…literally,**_ **a** _ **line…I, uh. *sighs* I already have part of a fourth entry written. I wouldn't hold your breath on seeing it**_ **soon** _ **, because I have a seriously bad track record with updating and this fic is marked "complete" for a reason even though I**_ **keep adding more** _ **, but, y'know. It could happen. I mean,**_ **this** _ **did.**_

 _ **So here. Have**_ **this.** _ **As always, I do hope you enjoy—and to those of you who've already reviewed the first two instalments, thank you so much!**_

* * *

 **Strike the fool who leads the liar**

Somewhere, Oscar realises, he's made a grave miscalculation.

Jaune is striding towards him with a dark scowl and an earth-eating gait, and time seems to slow as irrationally Oscar thinks _oh gods, he's tall, he's huge_ as if some part of his brain has only just clicked on and remembered that he's fourteen years old and five-foot-nothing while shod. He tucks in his chin defensively—or perhaps he inclines his head so he can see the young man properly as he approaches, because remembering his actual dimensions has shaken loose the fleeting but distinct notion that he is six-and-a-half feet of broad-shouldered adult and in his brief confusion and rising alarm, his instincts are struggling to discern which version of reality is the most current and immediate. He has a heartbeat more to remember Jaune's also a bona fide Huntsman-in-training who just _broke the wall_ before—

"How much longer can we even trust him!?"

Impact, the edges of knuckles and the heels of hands slamming into his sternum, his clavicle, his head bouncing sharply against the wall that his spine has just been roughly introduced to. For a brief moment, his feet leave the ground, and his cheek aches with phantom pain because in every other way he's _right back there._

* * *

The others would later describe the exit from Jinn's dimension as a gradual shift. For Oscar, it was the flip of a switch. One moment, he was numb, looking down at Ozpin's (Ozma's? When _had_ he changed his name?) crumpled form in the void, and the next he was staring at the inside of his own eyelids, kneeling in frigid snow that stung his flesh, eyes burning from the force with which they were squeezed shut.

 **Horror. Grief. Despair. Shame. Fear.**

They were hard, heavy emotions, walloping him in the stomach with the force of physical blows, pounding through his heart and his head in time with his pulse. It felt like all the blood in his body was being throttled through tiny chokepoints in his veins and arteries. He realised he was suffocating, and tried desperately to pull air into his lungs, except right now they were Ozpin's lungs and Ozpin's chest was clenched and heaving. They couldn't breathe.

There were words—no, _names_ looping through his mind, through Oscar's. Four of them, recited over and over in a litany of anguished prayer and an iron _refusal_ to forget. Oscar knew he would never speak them aloud. Vowed it, wordlessly.

He felt dazed. Stunned. He was crumbling apart in fear and helplessness, buckling under the crushing weight of feelings first- and second-hand. He was falling to pieces dangling on wires while the knot that held them together unravelled into sharp glittering threads that cut and cut and cut. He couldn't even hear words. Only voices. One voice—Yang's. She sounded angry, furious, through the awful, hollow ringing in his head.

Eyes open, a flash of red. Ruby's voice. Soft, afraid. He thought Ozpin spoke, but maybe he was hearing inside, not with his ears. He wasn't sure. He didn't care. Eyes closed again.

The punch that landed squarely on his cheekbone **(** **upper zygomatic arch and lower edge of orbital socket)** startled them too badly for the pain to register, even though neither of them had activated their Aura. The brutal shock of ramming backwards against a rough-barked pine more than made up for the missed sensation, and their Aura snapped to work automatically, shielding them from the worst of the potentially lethal impact and going to work on the forming bruise **(fractured bone and ruptured blood vessels, black eye within the hour unless treated)** spreading over his **(his?)** their face. He finally looked out on the world **and blinked back tears,** ignoring the throbbing in his left eye.

Qrow.

 _Qrow hurt me,_ disbelief

 _ **and I deserved it,**_ loathing

The tears wouldn't stop. The anguish in Qrow's voice made them worse. The matching pain in Ozpin's didn't, because Oscar wasn't the one crying.

He should have been afraid, being cornered by someone so much stronger and bigger than him. But Ozpin, towering over everyone for decades, had never thought of Qrow as big or intimidating, and so neither had Oscar. And Qrow—Qrow was their _friend._ Oscar simply didn't know how to be afraid of this man, even now. He had never seen Qrow so clearly and utterly _devastated,_ with his eyes glassy-bright and bloodshot in a way that had nothing to do with the contents of the flask tucked against his heart.

So this, Oscar realised, was what heartbreak looked like. And this, the howling storm inside them, was how it felt to be heartbroken.

(A knife-sharp memory: a gravestone etched with Ruby's **Summer's** emblem; tears soaking into the collar of his jacket; saltwater drying on the pads of his thumbs; Qrow's young, grief-stricken face looking up at him, desperate for the guidance and comfort that everyone else was too shattered to give him.)

Now as then, Ozpin was too broken to break any further, even in the face of his dearest friend's despair. Instead he wavered and collapsed, like a toppled house of cards, like a kicked-over sandcastle. **(** **He had learned to be strong when others needed it. No one needed him now. No one** _ **wanted**_ **him now. It was almost a relief.)** All the little pieces once so carefully arranged in their mimicry of contiguity fell out of alignment and in an instant were swept away into a deep, dark corner of Oscar's mind, locked behind a glassy-smooth seal that slammed down like a bulkhead crashing into place, leaving Oscar alone with thoughts and fears and newborn traumas he'd desperately hoped weren't really his.

* * *

There's a touch of that same heartbreak in Jaune's eyes now, but it's only by the fresh memory of Qrow lashing out that Oscar is able to recognise it beneath the ugly rage that has hardened the lines of the young swordsman's face.

"Jaune!" he hears; Yang's voice, shocked, angry— _for_ him.

"How do we even know it's really _him!?"_ Jaune demands, and if Oscar were a little more jaded and a little less afraid (a little more like Ozpin), he'd have to struggle not to laugh at the irony. He doesn't know Jaune well—no matter how much he cares about them, he doesn't know _any_ of these people well, and the absence of the phantom familiarity with them that Ozpin's presence once provided has only served to drive that point home for him—but he is absolutely certain that this is not who _Jaune_ really is.

This isn't who any of them really are, and _that's_ what makes Oscar shrink against the wall, cowering away from the fear and grief and fury that's possessed the kind soul who's hurting him.

"What if we've been talking to that _liar_ this whole time—?"

" _Jaune!"_

He's never heard _Ruby_ angry before. Not once. Not even in that terrifying moment at Haven when Weiss had nearly died. Then again, that's hardly a surprise; who would bother with words with their partner bleeding out on the ground? Oscar dares peek up to see Jaune's reaction; he's turned to glare at Ruby, and the younger girl is glaring right back. Jaune's gaze snaps back to Oscar, who flinches, trying to make himself smaller as if he isn't already the smallest person there.

Suddenly he's free, and Jaune is looking at him in absolute mortification, eyes wide with horror and glossy with new, unshed tears. For a heartbeat, the blond boy gazes down at his own hands, and then…he flees. Runs upstairs, slams a door behind him. Oscar can sympathise. He wishes he could lock himself away and feel safe again, feel _right_ again.

 _Time,_ Ren demands coldly, following Nora as she stomps after her leader.

 _Space,_ Blake suggests, and inside of a silent minute, Team RWBY has vacated the living room, and Oscar is alone.

For a long moment, he just stands there and stares at his feet, listening as the sounds of their retreat fade away. He stays exactly where he is until his ears seem to ring with the quiet, and then at last he dares to look up. He finds himself meeting his own gaze in his translucent reflection in the sliding door.

"Guess it's just you and me, old man," he mutters, almost hoping to see his eyes flash gold.

Ozpin doesn't so much as stir.

"You know what? Fine." Oscar looks around the empty room, nodding to himself. "I'm going for a walk."

No one stops him before he reaches the door. No one comes when he opens it. He hesitates in the threshold for a moment, wavering. Should he tell someone he's going? Leave a note, maybe? He'd have to riffle through Saphron and Terra's things to find a pen and paper, though, and that seems rude…

And maybe Oscar needs a little time, a little space, as much as they do. It's been a solid year since the last time he was truly alone. _Might as well take advantage of it._

(And maybe, Oscar doesn't dare think too loud, even though he's alone in his head for once—maybe he's not entirely sure he's coming back.) 

* * *

It's little more than a fleeting fancy, dismissed with surprising ease after he's had a few minutes to himself, breathing in the chilly late-autumn air in a steady, soothing rhythm. No one gives him a second look as he walks the streets of Argus; it's a safe place as cities go, and there's hours of light left besides. Oscar instinctively flinches away from considering the other reason the adults around him seem unconcerned. And then he takes a deep breath, pulls the thought back, and examines it.

He is no longer a child. He has the face of one (mostly), and the stature (entirely, to his dismay), and there's still some growing up he has to do on the inside as well—plenty of first-hand experience he's still lacking in, and he knows there's neurological development that'll continue for years to come. Even with Ozpin's presence in his _mind,_ his _brain_ is still young. But he doesn't think like a child anymore. He certainly doesn't feel like one. And, he's begun to notice lately, he no longer moves like one.

There's muscle on his frame, grace in his step, a habitual caution in the way his eyes glance around, slow and subtle but watchful. His spine is straight, his shoulders back, his head high. Between his bearing and the weapon discreetly folded on his belt, the passers-by have likely taken him for a Sanctum Academy student. Oscar has to admit, glancing at a young man across the street who is most definitely the genuine article, he actually looks the part; he's even the right age. The only thing that's off are his clothes, worn-out and patched and never made of the right material for combat in the first place.

And for the first time, as Oscar lets himself become properly aware of them, they feel wrong on his skin.

Even if he's just going to become Ozpin one day, that's not anyone's _fault._ Not Qrow's or RWBY's, not Jaune's or Nora's or Ren's. Not Ozpin's either, really; he can't even honestly find it in himself to blame the original Ozma, desperate and disinclined to ask questions, unaware of the fate to which he was condemning countless generations of "like-minded souls". Oscar doesn't deserve this, he's sure of that. He never wanted this, never asked for this, and it doesn't matter—no. No, that's not right. It _does_ matter.

" _Tough,"_ Maria had told him when he'd wailed over the unfairness. And it is. It is _tough,_ tougher than anything Oscar's ever grappled with before.

 _And it's alright to struggle when things are tough._

Whether Ozpin ever comes back or not, whether Oscar eventually loses his individual identity or not, it isn't something he has any control over. What he _can_ control is what he chooses to do now, and that thought—that _resonates_ like nothing else. Choice. For the first time since he left his aunt's farm, he feels like he has a real choice. And he's pretty sure he's already made it.

To hell with destiny. Oscar _wants_ to help those people back at the house because they are _his friends,_ and he can't just abandon them. Not when he can help, and as much as he's become accustomed to feeling out of his depth, well, aren't they all? Even Ozpin had turned out to be making it up as he went along, and for this brief moment, Oscar finds a strange sort of comfort in that terrible knowledge. He doesn't know what exactly they need to do next, none of them do, but he knows they'll need to fight. And for better or worse, he's a warrior now, or at least he's been handed everything he needs to become one.

Everything except…

He slows, drawing to the side of the pavement and leaning a shoulder against the brick of the nearest building. He knows he left his pack under one of the guest beds. Qrow's, actually, though Oscar figures that if the man's going to spend his time in Argus as a one-man pub crawl, maybe _he'll_ just take the bed and let Qrow pass out on the floor. (Part of him regrets the spiteful thought immediately, but his cheek feels hot with blood and Aura even though the bruise healed days ago.) When he checks, though, he finds his wallet tucked into a back pocket.

Oscar pulls out his scroll and pulls up a map to the shopping district. He finds three separate stores that specialise in combat gear for everyday Huntsman and Huntress wear. One of them is near a small grocery, and on a whim, he looks up an old casserole recipe Auntie had printed out and stuck on the fridge ages ago, checking the ingredients list. It'll be a nice thing to do for the group and for their hosts, and after all, Oscar thinks, it's pretty much impossible to stay mad at someone who feeds you good home cooking.

He pauses, running through that thought again. Kindness backed by ulterior motives.

 _That sounds…really familiar._

And then he shakes it off, because he's scrutinising his intentions in _making a casserole,_ and this is _definitely_ what Maria meant when she said he thought too much.

Oscar shoves the scroll back in his pocket and starts walking with purpose this time, feeling a smile settle on his lips.


	4. Chapter 4

_**A/N:**_ _ **So, this chapter wound up being not merely about the end of Volume 6, but of Volume 7, with spoilers for both volumes. It sort of flips between the events of both volumes' climaxes, but I want to be clear that the V6 stuff isn't just flashbacks. Or more accurately, that Oscar isn't flashing back during the rest of the story. He's entirely present within both narratives, not thinking back to prior events. I feel the end of V7C13 is very much the emotional payoff and a strong narrative mirror to Ozpin's presence in V6C12 and Oscar's revelation of it in V6C13, so I wove the stories together, but they are very much distinct threads. In fact, fully half of the Volume 6 sections were already written shortly after that volume's finale aired last year; I just could never bring the story to a satisfactory conclusion without inventing things whole-cloth. But now...well, see and decide for yourself.**_

 _ **This is almost certainly the final chapter I'll upload. I think Oscar has found his footing now. Whatever else happens, he's done falling, and Crashing Down has been very much about that fall. Here's to the landing! I hope you enjoy. Thanks especially to everyone who's been following this story from the very beginning; there literally would not be more than a single chapter without you!**_

* * *

 **Like the firebird from the ashes**

The sharp report of Due Process echoes around the cavernous underside of Atlas. It continues to ring in Oscar's ears long after the initial sound has dissipated into silence. He knows that if he's ever able to sleep again, that gunshot will thunder endlessly in his nightmares, accompanied by the terrible feeling of his Aura breaking apart into motes of light around him as the bullet slides off in the act of fracturing it, leaving a bruise instead of a hole and flinging him over the edge of the path. Even without the perfect memory that is part and parcel of the curse he's inherited, he doubts he could ever forget the hard, cold blue of James's eyes as the general fired.

Betrayal does not sting; it aches like an old wound when the weather turns, familiar and awful and far less surprising than anything so painful should ever be.

He is free-falling and fast approaching terminal velocity, and such is his life that this isn't even the first time this has happened to him. It's not even the first time all year. It will, Oscar realises with a dull, sickening shock, most likely be the last time this ever happens to him.

Maybe. Maybe not. He's not sure what happens now; when he dies, will it be over? Or will it be his turn to be a voice in someone's head, a presence in their dreams, a well of terrible knowledge for them to shy away from?

He's not ready for that. He has so much left to learn; he can't trust himself to teach. He's a fourteen-year-old trainee— _unofficial_ trainee!—who can't even cast a spell, who was worn out by a single skilled opponent, who can't even keep the loyalty of men who are supposedly his most reliable allies. How is he meant to pass the torch of magic and memory to another? And he was never, should never have _had_ to be, prepared for _this_. He had almost, _almost_ made his peace with the far-off fading into each other that would be his fate and Ozpin's both. He doesn't want to—no, he cannot do this alone.

But he is alone. He has no Aura, no plan; a weapon, but gravity is not an enemy he can fight. The magic bound to his soul is nothing but flickering embers, and he does not know how to fan them into a flame he can use. No one knows where he is, no one but James Ironwood, his friend—his murderer. Fear, anger, and disbelief war over his psyche, but in the end exhaustion wins out; not only of the body, but of the soul.

In the end, he is alone, and no one is coming to save him.

The light of the Vault of Creation is nothing more than a pinprick above him now, and what lies below is a seemingly-endless darkness. There's no telling how long he has before he hits the distant ground and meets his end, or perhaps his new beginning. Oscar falls through a void, frigid and silent but for the sound of the air his body pushes out of the way as he hurtles ever downward. It rushes in his ears like a thousand angry, indistinct whispers, berating him for his failures, for his helplessness. The people of Mantle, abandoned by the man entrusted with their protection, doomed by Oscar's failed efforts to reason with him. The people of Vale, broken and scattered when their own protector was not strong enough to save them.

 _(His people. His weakness. His fault.)_

The cold bites into him more fiercely than he's ever felt before; there are no heaters here, and the air is thin, and the warmth of his Aura around him is only a fleeting memory. _Cold comfort_ , Oscar thinks inanely, wrapped only in battered, filthy clothes and morbid resignation. His heart feels as numb as his limbs are becoming, and his mind is slowing to match, winding down to rest and wait and maybe—oh, how he hopes!—maybe to simply _cease._

 _Let it be Ozpin's problem,_ he pleads selfishly to absent gods; _let me rest, let it end, I can't make someone else be me—_

His eyes flutter closed.

* * *

The Manta spins sickeningly in the sky, twisting and tumbling with all the grace of a concussed albatross but headed indisputably _down,_ nose angling steeply towards the forest below as the treetops fast-forward out of sight beneath them. In the pilot's seat, Maria is yelling, cursing Cordovin and the airship and even herself, struggling with the controls and her goggles as if in desperate hope that she can find the magic combination to restore her sight and the integrity of the ship's engines in one go.

 _Magic,_ Oscar thinks wildly; can he levitate the ship? Lift its occupants to safety? Shield them from the impact somehow? He doesn't know. He'll never know. He hadn't wanted to know, because learning magic was more than a reluctant acceptance of the inevitable, it was a deliberate commitment to his future as Ozpin—not the Headmaster of Beacon, but the ancient, immortal wizard of Remnant, keeper of the Relics, creator of the Maidens. Ozpin, keenly aware of Oscar's feelings and never imagining that there would be a scenario where he couldn't step in to help, hadn't pushed the issue.

For once, Oscar really, _really_ wishes the stubborn old man had pushed him.

There is nothing he can do; the controls are unfamiliar, the readouts indecipherable to someone of his limited experience. He has a vague understanding that pulling back on the yoke should make the ship point up again, but when he tries the Manta doesn't respond.

"We're going to crash!" he shouts back to Ruby, hearing the quaver in his voice and hating it but there's no helping it.

 _We're going to crash._

 _We're going to_ die.

It's the last clear thought he has, his panicked mind turning instead to irrational flashes like: _Ruby's too nice to go out like this, she's too young damn it_ even though he's younger, and: _I can't let Maria die, Maria's awesome_ —and then, suddenly, _**Stay calm.**_

The ship's sailed on staying calm—but immediately, Oscar's pulse slows, his breathing evening out, clarity and stillness replacing the panicked rush of what he was sure would be his final thoughts. It would be alarming, the way his own instincts cede so immediately to Ozpin's will, if the results weren't such a relief. In all the adrenaline, he can't even muster any surprise, let alone an entire additional layer of distress.

 _ **It's going to be okay,**_ Ozpin tells him. His mental voice is soft and tired, oddly listless, but there is nothing rote in his reassurances. Waves of calm and certainty break gently against Oscar as he gradually realises he knows how to pilot a military aircraft, and never mind the fact that he didn't five long, terrifying seconds ago.

 _ **You know now. You can do this, Oscar. Just breathe…**_

* * *

 _ **Oscar.**_ **Oscar!**

Oscar's eyes fly open. He feels for an instant a peculiar disconnect that his own brief dissociation cannot quite explain, but when it passes he feels more himself and in-control than he has since Ironwood shot him. It's as if he's been jolted somehow, shaken back to his senses from the inside out.

The Long Memory falls beside him—at the same rate, and that's wrong, density and air resistance and—doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. He needs his cane, not for comfort or support or self-defence but because he's suddenly certain that if he can get his hands around it and grip the lever _just so_ then something miraculous will happen.

He snatches at it, fingers just barely brushing it and then it's in his hands. A press of the lever, and the cane extends. Another press, and a matching pressure inside, and there's a golden light sparking between his hands, over his fingers, in his heart, between the teeth of the gears as they spin to life and for one precious instant he is home: warm sunlight on his freckled skin and catching in his dark hair as he walks among the fields of his aunt's little farm, clockwork turning in the ceiling above his head as pale fingers curl around a warm mug and ageing eyes watch the world go by below his tower.

He's not entirely sure who he is when he breaks through the cavern floor and falls at last into the glow of the sunrise, flipping himself so that he is correctly positioned for what he mentally reframes as an airdrop. It's a particular skill of his, this shift in perspective. A tragedy becomes an opportunity. Omission becomes compartmentalisation, classification. A lie becomes a kindness, and he has been kindest of all to himself in this poisonous way.

He has allowed fear to change him. Not to rule him, as Ironwood has. Ironwood has crossed lines Ozpin still balks at. Ozpin did not leave his kingdom to die. Ozpin has not sentenced a wounded child to death for the crime of counselling mercy. Ozpin knows fear, and while he cannot claim to have stood firm against it—he has flinched, he has run, he has hidden—he has never bowed.

His mistakes seem so small now, in the shadow of Ironwood's, and yet they still loom large. Because they are his own, and he cannot brush off what he has done simply because someone else has done something worse. If only he could, Salem's mere existence would absolve him of any wrongdoing.

 _Salem._

Oscar remembers Ruby's frantic message—he sees a glimpse of stormclouds on the horizon, roiling with unnatural colours—Ozpin reaches out with that strange _other_ sense that sets his blood humming in the presence of Relics and Maidens—

And something as ancient as he and darker by far lashes back, the sting of it searing through them and solidifying suspicion into awful certainty.

Salem is _here._

The wizard's two souls share a grim reflection on frying pans and fires as the ground rushes up to meet them. They reach inside for the familiar crackling heat of their magic, letting it burn through their veins and further. It catches fire on the jagged edges of their shattered Aura.

 _We say Aura is drawn from an inner pool, a well, a reservoir,_ one of them whispers, speaking on a level so deep that it's not really accurate to say it is _speech_ at all. It is knowledge, pure and direct. _Yet we do not say it runs dry. We say it breaks. If the soul is flame, then Aura cannot be water. It is neither and both. It is—_

* * *

In the immediate trauma of the crash Oscar blacks out, and the last thing he feels from Ozpin is _fear-shame-grief-failure_ breaking through the heavy, forced calm because in that split second he believes, as Oscar does, that this is it.

 _ **I'm sorry,**_ he whispers wretchedly, _**I'm sorry, I'm sorry—**_

And then his consciousness is snuffed along with Oscar's, and time—

—skips—

There's a dull, spreading ache resounding through his skull as he stares out at the wrecked and smouldering forest. Beside him, Maria looks shaken but whole.

"We're—we're still in one piece!" he gasps, or he thinks he does, before the heavy tread of Cordovin's mech intrudes on his brief elation.

It isn't over.

He helps Maria climb out of the wreckage of the cockpit, less with the physical effort of it than the sensory feedback, warning her around sharp broken edges and sparking wires and trip hazards that he isn't sure her Semblance will pick up on. Looking around, he sees Ruby on her knees beside the open door of the Manta's hold, bracing herself to stand with Crescent Rose. Nora, Ren, and Jaune are racing towards them along the cliffside; a little black bird wings over the trees ahead of them, his identity clear enough even without the peculiar tug in Oscar's chest as the magic in him recognises itself in Qrow.

There's still no sign of Yang or Blake, he notes with a touch of fear—or of Ozpin, the abrupt realisation of which fans that fear into a momentary panic as Oscar imagines the impact knocked him right out of his head, forced out by the physical motion of his brain bouncing off the inside his skull.

A mechanical clicking sound jolts him back to rationality, turning a concerned look towards Maria as she fiddles with her eyes again. As she grumbles, Oscar draws in a deep breath, forcing himself to calm. He can already feel his overtaxed Aura going to work on his slight concussion, easing the strained feeling behind his eyes and quelling the stirrings of vertigo. If Ozpin could be dislodged by physical trauma, especially trauma mild enough to walk away from, it would have happened to some other like-minded soul further up the line before now. The old man's still in there, which is more of a relief than he's comfortable admitting.

The wizard's brief resurgence has left Oscar feeling oddly drained now that he's retreated, caught between his own fatigue and the hollow lightness where the pressure of Ozpin's presence had been. He still has room for dread as he looks up at Cordovin's hulking mech. He hopes the others are in better shape than he is. There'll be no more fighting for him today unless there's no other choice. Just as Ozma's magic is no more than a flicker inside him, the Aura around him feels as fragile as spun—

* * *

— _glass._

The white-hot edges of his Aura fuse together, magic arcing in the spaces between. The air around him feels heavy like a storm. The scent of ozone and waiting rain is overpowering, the blank cold of the snowfield yielding to the clean sear of the forge.

He twists in midair moments before impact and _pushes,_ a luminous green shield crackling with magic's lightning crystallising around him. He lands with a sound like thunder, eldritch electricity grounding back into him, entirely unscathed and crouched to spring at any waiting attackers. But he is alone—though no longer truly alone—and so he straightens, and as he does so he realises that he is still Oscar.

He doesn't ask Ozpin if he's back. He states it as a fact. The wizard's presence is unmistakable; he's shown up yet again to rescue Oscar from a crisis. Ozpin hastens to assure him otherwise.

 **You** _ **saved us.**_ There's…warmth, pride, in the words. It's the first iota of positive emotion he's felt from Ozpin since the train crash, and it begins to dawn on Oscar that Ozpin really _is_ back; back for good. But there's something tentative and hesitant about him. As if he's uncertain of his welcome. A rush of sorrow and guilt pours from him in answer to the observation, and Oscar has the impression of a deep inhale, a bowed head. He can quite literally _feel_ the apology coming.

 _ **Oscar, I—**_

"Stop," Oscar cuts him off, and maybe it's cruel of him. But he doesn't need to hear Ozpin say he's sorry; he can gauge that for himself, and he is so damn tired of this endless cycle of recrimination and absolution, guilt and blame and shame and fault and _always at the worst possible time._ He is tired of being driven by suspicion and fear, that of others and his own. If they could have just sorted everything out before the world went to hell, if they hadn't been so afraid of shattering the fragile equilibrium they'd built—! Between Salem and Ironwood, the uneasy peace among them is broken beyond repair now, and where they might have had time to fix it before, now they'll have to leave the pieces where they lie until there's time to breathe again. But of course, time to breathe is time to worry; time to overthink and second-guess and catastrophise. And Oscar can hardly claim that he hasn't been part of the problem up to now…

* * *

He thinks Qrow suspects. No one else seems to. Oscar is at war with himself, wondering whether he should speak up or not. They hate having things kept from them, but this isn't the sort of news they have a history of wanting to hear. How will they take it? What's the right choice?

But then Ruby gives him the perfect opening—and, more importantly, puts him in a position where if he says nothing, he'll be lying.

He doesn't want to lie. He definitely doesn't want them to think of him as a liar. Doesn't want to be tarred with the same brush as Ozpin. There isn't anything wrong, though, surely, in saving lives—in being saved? Will they see a selfish act, Ozpin stepping in to preserve his vessel when he'd been absent before? Will they think Oscar was lying when he said Ozpin was gone in the first place? When he says Ozpin is gone now?

Nothing for it. Better to get it over with quickly. He's sure enough of his place to know no one will go so far as to punt him out of the airship mid-flight, and that'll have to do.

"I've been meaning to tell you guys…"

He senses more than sees Qrow tense in the co-pilot's seat. It's as if Qrow somehow knows what he's about to say, and maybe he does—Mantas and Bullheads handle similarly once they're actually in the air, but Oscar has flown neither and Qrow knows it, just as he knows Ozpin _has._

For a moment he wonders absurdly if the news will inspire something like hope, or even just relief—but after a quick glance around at cautious, wary faces (Jaune's and Yang's edging towards outright hostility), he abandons that notion. He keeps his eyes between his feet as he tells them how Ozpin intervened. How he seemed called by Oscar's despair and didn't take control, but only offered knowledge, a flicker of much-needed reassurance, and then receded once more into his self-imposed exile.

It's Yang who speaks out, because of course it is, and maybe that's unfair of him but almost all he's known from her is the suspicion and resentment she bears towards Ozpin. Ironically enough, without Ozpin he has no other, more flattering memories of her to fall back on.

"Does that mean he's been watching us this whole time!?"

"I don't know," Oscar has to admit, raising his head; Yang is glaring at him, but not, he now knows, at _him._ It hurts anyway, but that she doesn't mean it to takes the edge off. Still, he finds the group as a whole looks more thoughtful than truly upset. "But…at least it means he was looking out for us." This much he can do: assure them of what he knows of Ozpin's intentions. Whether they trust his judgement or not is up to them.

He debates continuing with something more definitely _no_ -shaped, but he isn't sure if it will convince anyone—isn't totally sure, even, that 'no' is the answer everyone really wants. Regardless, it's the answer he'd have to lean towards giving. Oscar doesn't know if he can describe how total, how _absolute_ the feeling of Ozpin's absence is in a way that will make the others understand. He isn't dormant like he was in the time between the Fall of Beacon and the day Oscar first looked in a mirror and failed to recognise himself. He's just…gone. Like any other dead man would be. And once again, Oscar has no way of knowing whether to expect another ghostly visitation before the final resurrection in him.

He doesn't really know what to hope for, either.

* * *

Ozpin retreats, but doesn't withdraw. He waits. For once, he is the anxious one in the face of Oscar's patience.

"All I want to know," Oscar says in an even tone, "is how we save Atlas next." There's a coldness at his core now, dulling his emotional turmoil into a faint static. It freezes his thoughts into crystal clarity, sharpens his focus to a razor edge. He recognises this detached intensity. This feeling of summoning up all his will and forging it into confidence and determination, an armour of certainty and authority—if only over himself—whose fit resembles nothing so much as arrogance. It's what drove the last king of Vale to seek bloody victory in the Great War when there was no peaceful alternative, sent the Headmaster of Beacon racing to meet the death he knew likely awaited him in the Vault of Choice when there was no other chance to save his school and his city. It's what General Ironwood is trying to emulate high above them this very moment so that the reality of killing a child in cold blood and damning an entire nation in the name of tactics does not destroy him. It's what will have to carry Oscar through this nightmare and maybe, if he's lucky, beyond it, to a place where he can take the armour off again.

So help him, Atlas will not fall just because everyone is too busy fighting over who to blame. If they lose here, it will be because victory was impossible—not because they allowed it to slip through their fingers. Not again.

 _ **There will be no victory through strength,**_ Ozpin recites, a glint of the old professorial tone shining through.

"Good, 'cause I think it's safe to say Salem's got the upper hand there."

He gazes up at the oncoming storm, dark and turbulent and unspeakably _wrong_ against the warm blush of the sunset. It's been a long time since Salem joined the fray in person. She must be very certain her campaign is in its endgame.

 _ **She comes, in part, for us. She will try to capture us, and break us, if she can.**_

Oscar shudders at the echo of memories Ozpin carefully does not call to mind.

"Why doesn't she ever just _stop?"_

 _ **For the same reason she began. She doesn't know how to let go. She can't see a future through the rubble of her past.**_

Something clicks for Oscar, then. He's always thought of Ozpin as a ghost even though he knows, viscerally, that he is more. He's referred to him in thoughts and spoken words alike as a dead man, and Ozpin has never argued. Ozpin has died hundreds of times, and yet—he's lived hundreds of times as well. He's grown old almost as often as he's died young, made foolish mistakes and earned wisdom off the back of them. He has faded and been renewed with each and every lifetime, changed and grown and become something and someone else.

Ozpin, Oscar realises, is very much alive. Salem died when she chose to kill the man she once waged a war against the gods themselves to save.

"She's like…some kind of restless spirit. Holding onto hate because she doesn't know how to move on."

 _ **If it's a lesson you're proposing, I fear I'm the wrong teacher.**_

"I'm not proposing anything. Just finally starting to understand, I think. She's fighting because she thinks she needs to win. Because it's the only way forward she can see. But we're not fighting to _get_ anything, just to keep what we have. And that means that even if we never win…"

 _ **Yes. The game has always been rigged, but the rules are fixed; she can't take our turn away. We just have to keep playing. As long as we are careful not to let her win, the game continues. Life goes on.**_

"Ever been tempted to flip the board?" Oscar asks quietly, thinking of the Relics.

 _ **Why do you think I bolted down the corners?**_

There is a bitter irony in the fact that they know exactly how to destroy the world, but not how to save it. Yet in a way, it makes sense. Ozpin isn't a saviour. He hasn't claimed to be, hasn't tried to be, for a very long time. Salvation, if it exists, is beyond his power to bring to bear. So he's given his life—so many of his lives, _their_ lives—to the cause of protection instead. It's an ongoing suicide mission, buying time for generations of Humanity to live and love and die. A perpetual sacrifice robbed of grace by millennia of repetition, by a force of habit that has numbed what was once nobility into weary pragmatism.

"Just to be clear, there's still no plan?"

 _ **The 'plan', when Salem comes knocking, is to run.**_

"Not an option."

 _ **No.**_

"So we find the others, and…"

… _ **we do our best. You realise we're likely—?**_

"Going to die. Yeah. Never stopped us before."

Sorrow, edged with the ever-present guilt. Plus something…else. Something warmer, kinder, half-buried beneath the rest. Bittersweet.

"What?"

Oscar has another of those strange impressions of Ozpin, then. Like the old man is smiling at him. When he replies, Oscar smiles too. He thinks it might even be the same smile, small and soft and a little bit sad, and it stays in place as he gathers himself up and turns away, headed for a narrow path that he hopes will lead him back to his friends.

 _ **You've grown up.**_

* * *

 ** _A/N: Reviews are always very welcome; whether you have something to say or not, though, thanks for reading!_**

 ** _That's all I have to say re:the fic; the rest of this note is about the fact that I'm now over at AO3, as some of you may have already noticed. For anyone who follows me as an author and doesn't just know me through this fic, what that means is that I will continue to update ongoing fics here, even if I cross-post them to AO3 and update there as well. Most of my new fics will be added to that site, however. I may crosspost a few here if they're for fandoms that are particularly active on this site—like, say, RWBY, but if I seem to have gone dark even by my highly-irregular standards of activity, that's why. If you happen to read any of the AO3 versions of my fics, you might notice slight changes or additions in some of them; I haven't replicated those changes on this site because I didn't think they were significant enough. And...that's the sum-total of what there is to say about that, I think! Alright. See y'all around, and as always, thanks for being here!_**


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